Policy Brief: Game Changer: Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children’s Learning and Health

Children as young as 4 are immersed in a new gaming culture, but many parents, educators, and health professionals, concerned over violence, sexual content, and reports of addiction, do not consider games to be a positive force in children’s lives. Game Changer addresses this critique, offering a new framework to use games to help children learn healthy behaviors, traditional skills such as reading and math, and 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, global learning, and programming design. It specifies how increased national investment in research-based digital games might play a cost-effective and transformative role and provides comprehensive action steps for media industry, government, philanthropy, and academia to harness the appeal of digital games to improve children’s health and learning. The report was co-authored by Ann My Thai, David Lowenstein, and Dixie Ching, as well as David Rejeski of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; support was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio.